TAP into the cloud with SAP intelligent spend management
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TAP into the cloud with SAP intelligent spend management WRITTEN BY
WILLIAM SMITH PRODUCED BY
ARRON RAMPLING
DECEMBER 2019
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Fawaz Al-Nouri, General Manager Transformation Acceleration Programs, EMEA, at SAP, discusses the best ways to succeed in digital transformation
T
he necessity of digital transformation is well understood and easily grasped; businesses have to find new ways to deliver
value, generate revenue, and improve efficiency. What is more obscure is the actual business of going about the transformation – what solutions to 04
put in place, how to adapt them to specific industry, and how to measure and achieve success when doing such transformation. Multinational enterprise software company SAP’s Transformation Acceleration Programs (TAP) offers customers the necessary expertise to achieve a successful spend management transformation, as Fawaz Al-Nouri, General Manager for TAP in Europe, Middle East and Africa, explains. “SAP’s purpose has always been about helping the world run better and improving people’s lives. In support of this purpose, TAP was formed to help businesses define their transformation roadmap and how to move from their current outdated systems – where they’re not getting the most value they can – to new technologies that benefit and improve the way they do business and in turn
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“ SAP’s purpose has always been about helping the world run better and improving people’s lives”
achieve their vision to better serve their end customers.” The TAP process begins with gathering an understanding of the client’s existing setup. “Our group of deployment experts will apply a proven engagement model to expedite and improve the success of spend management transformation. We provide software, industry and pro-
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— Fawaz Al-Nouri, General Manager, Transformation Acceleration Programs for Europe, Middle East and Africa, SAP
cess expertise while championing an operating model focused on value and exceptional business outcomes. We take a design thinking approach, where we study where our customers are today, but at the same time we also try to understand where they want to be, and the barriers that are stopping them from getting there.” It is only after this exercise has been completed that potential solutions are put forward and discussed. “Based on the TAP analysis, we recommend the right technology and decide what makes sense for our customers to take on. Throughout the engagement we’re thinking about solving our customers problems and making them run better.” The solutions and capabilities that SAP offers are centred around its
CLICK TO WATCH : ‘SAP PROFILE’ 07 digital core enterprise resource plan-
It’s worth noting that while the digital
ning (ERP) system, S/4HANA. Tightly
core S/4HANA is available in both on-
connected to this digital core are
premise and cloud editions, most of the
branching capabilities for customer
branching capabilities such as spend
relationship management and experi-
management are on the cloud, and
ence, network and spend management,
Al-Nouri is a big believer in working on
digital supply chain, human resources
cloud. “When I started implementing
and people management and more.
software, SAP was known as the ERP
“SAP provides end-to-end solutions
company; we delivered wall-to-wall on-
that cover most of our customers’
premise solutions. At that time, I was a
needs” says Al-Nouri. “The important
little bit sceptical about cloud. I used to
thing is to prioritise and plan when
think that large businesses with com-
to implement what and tie all these
plex IT infrastructure wouldn’t be able
pieces together so that the customer
to adopt the cloud. Then, in 2010 SAP
can run their business seamlessly.”
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a choice in how they consume SAP’s
running IT processes inside your four
software. This is when I started to work
walls, putting them on the cloud frees
with many customers embarking on
you from managing that on your own.
the journey to move to the cloud, see-
Reduced maintenance, infrastructure
ing first-hand that it’s possible and all
and support costs results in signifi-
the benefits that come with it. It was
cantly lower total cost of ownership.
then that I myself was transformed.”
Number two is the connection to the
In that regard, Al-Nouri cites three
outside world. The cloud gives you
key reasons that spend management
access to the business network you
cloud transformation is worthwhile.
need to achieve a high level of col-
“While we always look at the broader
laboration with other companies and
spectrum, we’re big advocates of cloud
organisations, where businesses con-
technology. Number one is because
nect, communicate and collaborate to
of the return on investment. Instead of
redefine how work gets done. When
you plug into the business network,
through the cloud. Artificial intelligence,
you get instant access to millions of
the internet of things and many more
potential customers, suppliers and
innovations will be at your fingertips
solutions. This will bring value to all
when you move to the cloud.”
stakeholders; lower processing costs,
However, such transformations
eliminate mistakes, and speed up the
cannot be achieved through technol-
transactions. It’s like comparing email
ogy alone. Culture must always be a
to Facebook, sharing business cards
consideration, as Al-Nouri explains.
with connecting on LinkedIn, and
“It’s important to understand the cli-
postcards to SnapChat. Thirdly, digital
ent’s culture, because every customer
technology means you don’t have to
is different. What we find in cloud
invest a lot of money and time to build
transformation is that transitioning
the technology that you need in-house,
to a cloud mindset by moving away
instead having access to it right away
from on-premise customisations to
E XE CU T I VE PRO FI LE
Fawaz Al-Nouri Fawaz Al-Nouri is part of the intelligent spend management group at SAP, bringing 22 years of experience in helping businesses to transform and implement large scale enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, supply chain solutions, and cloud services. Al-Nouri started with Ariba in 2006, which later became part of the SAP family. He held multiple advisory and leadership roles before becoming in 2017 the General Manager for Transformation Acceleration Programs (TAP) in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Al-Nouri’s primary focus in his current role is the transformation of customers from SAP on-premise solutions to the cloud.
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Is your organization built to evolve? How can you navigate relentless disruption and tomorrow’s uncertainty? By becoming a more kinetic enterprise—an intelligent enterprise built to evolve. It’s time to reimagine everything. Deloitte can show you how—and help you make an impact with SAP ® solutions. Learn more at www.deloitte.com/SAP
Copyright © 2019 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved.
Big questions and big answers, about the future of procurement and cloud. The past decade has brought intense business and technology disruption—especially for procurement, finance, and supply chain leaders. Now a new challenge sits on the horizon. By 2025, SAP intends to end mainstream support for its SAP® Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) solution—an on-premise offering that many organizations use for procure-to-pay processes today. What should you know? We asked Frederic Girardeau-Montaut, leader of Deloitte Consulting LLP’s SAP Ariba practice, to share his insights. Why the rush to transition away from SAP Supplier Relationship Management? The year 2025 is closer than it seems. It takes time to understand your options, build the business case, create your roadmap, and do the actual work. Wait too long, and you could find yourself operating with an unsupported solution and missing out on future innovations. For many SAP customers, the next step will be the SAP® Ariba® cloud suite. That’s where SAP is focusing its energy, innovations, and solution enhancements when it comes to procurement. But is jumping to SAP Ariba too soon a risk? What if needs dramatically change between now and 2025? There are always risks, which is why you shouldn’t undertake the journey alone. You need a partner that can help orchestrate your transformation. But there’s another big force that helps reduce the risk, and that’s cloud. With cloud, you can respond, scale, and evolve as the market evolves. You can become a more kinetic enterprise—one that moves fast and with impact. Cloud also allows you to more seamlessly integrate capabilities—so you can link SAP Ariba solutions with the SAP S/4HANA® digital core, for example, and take it one step further
with SAP® Integrated Business Planning. The payoff? You can drive intelligent automation and insights across the entire plan-to-procureto-pay spectrum. What kind of help will organizations need? First, experience matters. The learning curve can be steep. At Deloitte, we have been steadily building on our insights as we help industry leaders worldwide move from SAP SRM to SAP Ariba—from on-prem to cloud. Our 30-year relationship with SAP—and our vast implementation experience—provides a solid foundation for doing that. Second, this is more than a technology upgrade. This is an opportunity for a true digital business transformation. This is your chance to enable intelligent spend management that can drive savings and efficiencies across the business … your chance to transform the tax picture … your chance to build tomorrow’s digital supply network. To do those things, you need a complete team —not just a technology team. You need specialists in tax, spend, cloud, risk, IT implementation, industry-specific business strategy, and more. And you likely will need it on a global scale. That’s the kind of team Deloitte leverages to help our clients—no matter where they are in their journeys. It’s about helping them strengthen operations, improve processes, innovate, and evolve—in a holistic way that goes beyond just a technology platform.
Want additional insights? Contact SAP@ deloitte.com to learn more or to schedule a demo of SAP Ariba solutions in action.
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standard processes in the cloud is
In the course of its assessments,
key. Therefore, change management
TAP encounters differing reasons for
to ease this transition is a huge aspect
embarking upon a transformation.
that has to be taken into consideration.”
Some businesses might be inspired
Because such approaches can lead
by the need for modernisation, while
to disruption, it is consequently vital
others might be more existential. “In
that organisations keep on top of com-
the current digital age, every company
munication. “A lot of transformations
is under pressure to achieve digital
depend on change management and
transformation, simply because of all
how you communicate the change, not
the technologies that we have around
only to your internal stakeholders, but
us. These technologies are connecting
also to the external world so that eve-
people, the internet, and the physical
rybody knows what’s going to happen
world like never before. When every-
and everybody’s onboard to move in a
thing is connected business as usual
new direction.”
becomes a thing of the past and the
CO MPAN Y FACT S
• The world’s #1 cloud business software company • Recognised as a Leader across all categories • Proven expertise in 25 industries
13 transformation of many industries needs to accelerate.” says Al-Nouri. “But some industries are under more
“ In the current digital change in productivity and incremental age, every company process innovation might be appropriis under pressure ate for some industries like mining, oil and gas, and chemicals, other industo achieve digital tries like media, banking, and retail are transformation” under intense pressure to innovate pressure than others. While step
their business model and improve their customer experience now.” Whether it’s a step process or accelerated change, Al-Nouri sees
— Fawaz Al-Nouri, General Manager, Transformation Acceleration Programs for Europe, Middle East and Africa, SAP
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PA RT N E R S
“Deloitte is one of the preferred SAP partners for running transformation projects. Whether you want to undertake an end-to-end procurement transformation or plan a bigger digital enterprise transformation with cloud technology, Deloitte can help.” — Fawaz Al-Nouri, General Manager, Transformation Acceleration Programs for Europe, Middle East and Africa, SAP
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the digital transformation. “As business grows, there’s more spend, across more channels, than ever before. This requires better control, better speed, and better sustainability.” To be able to manage these changes, a solid, adaptable and scalable procurement platform is needed. “We call it intelligent spend management, because it covers all areas needed for procurement transformation to be successful. Full transparency into what and how you’re spending is critical and is best achieved by adopting a seamless source to pay system. This system needs to be intelligently connected with your trading partners so that you and your suppliers are always up to date, and you can apply compliance policies to every transaction. Only then can you leverage advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing to further optimize and automate the system.” Looking at 2020 and beyond, therefore, and understanding how many businesses need to embark on a transformation, scalability becomes very important for TAP. “We see a lot of w w w.s a p . com
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demand and we want to help as many customers as we can to transform better and faster. We’re addressing this by developing tools that can streamline the transformation process, from legacy systems analysis utilities to data migration accelerators. We are also working closely with our ecosystem. Our technology partners provide solution extensions that complement our portfolio, such as process mining by Celonis to support process transformation from beginning to end, and 16
signature management by DocuSign to eliminate manual steps. Our system
“ Transformation is an ongoing process, and the most important factor is customer end to end success from transformation to adoption” — Fawaz Al-Nouri, General Manager, Transformation Acceleration Programs for Europe, Middle East and Africa, SAP
1972
Year founded
€24.74bn+ Approximate Revenue
integration partners support our teams by providing their knowledgeable resources for implementation, integration and change management. Large consulting firms such as Deloitte, IBM or EY can, on the one hand, look at the overarching transformation programs and process improvement. On the other hand, meanwhile, pro-
99,700 Number of employees
curement niche specialists such as apsolut or ExceleratedS2P can focus on the functional design and technical integration aspects.” Finally, Al-Nouri points out the importance of recognising that transformation is an ongoing process, and the most important factor is customer end to end success from transformation to adoption. As SAP’s member of the executive board Adaire Fox-Martin said in her speech at Web Summit in Lisbon this November: ”I will tell you the single most truthful thing you can hear about transformation: It never ends. The market and the customer will never stop changing. That fact grounds us and should ground you. We hold customer success as the inspiration of everything we do.”
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